During his four years’ Presidency of the Republic he had been surrounded by open foes in France and by opponents who lay in ambush awaiting opportunities to strike. Foreign opinion, however, was less hostile prior to than it became after the coup d’état, which was the signal for an outburst of almost universal execration. Even Queen Victoria, who, some three years later, was entertaining, and was entertained by, the Emperor and Empress, condemned the act of December, 1851. Early in 1852 the Queen, in a letter to King Frederick William of Prussia, wrote:[113]
The political stratagem in Paris will have taken your Majesty back to the days of your youth.... Louis Napoleon had tried to freshen up the memories of all European Governments by the reintroduction of the eagle on the standards of the French army, and by allusions to changes of the boundaries, etc. In spite of this, I firmly believe in the maintenance of peace. But I am made much more anxious by the thought that those Continental Governments which have gone too far in their blind reaction, led astray by the Paris example, are of the erroneous opinion that a State is likely to last eternally which has been raised on the ruins of civil liberty with the blood of the middle classes of France, and that they may be encouraged to widen the breach between them and their peoples, and completely destroy the belief in the political morality of Governments in general.
The whole House was on its feet, threatening, shaking its fists at a man with a waxen face who protested against this last humiliation inflicted on his master. Like the Jews demanding of Pilate that he should deliver Jesus to them, we cried to posterity at the top of our voices: “Crucifige, crucifige eum!”
I do not know which of the two attitudes has left the more painful impression on my mind--that of Conti [the Emperor’s former Secretary], surrounded, almost struck, but meeting these threats with the most magnificent coolness; or that of the seven hundred and fifty representatives of the French nation, raging against a man who for six months had been little more than a corpse. He had been very guilty; but we, in our turn, were very cruel.[114]
The visit of the Emperor and Empress to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort in 1855 was heralded by the issue of a placard thus conceived: